everything moves real slow when it's forty below

My show goes up on Monday.  Four days of hell and then sleep.  I have not been sleeping properly.  When I close my eyes, students start lining up to ask me stupid questions that they think, for some reason, only I can answer.  Where is my other shoe?...  Can I have a safety pin?...  Is it okay if I go home to get my shirt?...  I don't know where my costume went...  Brandon took my sword!... My whiskers are crooked... and so on and so forth until 6:15am when I am actually relieved to get out of bed and get away from the chaos.

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Ophelia is doing better.  She jumps up on the couch again.  It takes more effort than it used to, and sometimes it takes more than one attempt.  But when I compare that to two weeks ago when I thought we were about to be confronted with a terrible decision whether or not to put her down, this still seems like something to celebrate.  She is much better.

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J is turning seventeen on Sunday.  Our little family has been together since she was eleven.  I still have heart pangs when I think of my sister, of how this was meant to turn out.  I will probably always have heart pangs when I think of my sister.

My mother is changing into someone I do not recognize.  My mother has always been a bit of a battleaxe and it troubles me a little that she concedes too easily these days.  To germs, to age, to sadness.  She concedes things she never used to concede, and I do not want her to.


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